Why can't I choose my own doctor? (www.startribune.com).
by Steve Timmer
Aug 12, 2013, 2:00 PM

Twila’s sure about MNsure

She doan wan it!

The photo is from a Strib article about the new billboard that went up on Snelling Avenue in St. Paul in the last day or so. The person shown in the billboard is not Twila Brase, but Twila’s the executive director of the Citizens’ Council for Health Care Freedom.

You might mosey over to Twila’s site to see the photos of unhealthy-looking men addressing groups of white-haired Medicare recipients.

The Council’s sloganeering tagline is “Securing Health Care Freedom for All.” Not, “Securing Health Care for All.”

Sometimes one word makes all the difference, doesn’t it kids?

Anyway, I’ve been imagining a conversation that one might have with Twila Brase:

Q: Do you favor letting people die or suffer from serious illness or injury for want of health care, meaning the ability to pay for it?

A: No. (If Twila’s answer to this one is “yes,” it would be absurd and pointless to talk further with Twila.)

Q: So then, the question is how to provide that health care?

A: Um, I suppose so.

Q: How should we do that?

A: I don’t know; give me some ideas.

Q: How about if we make the entire health care system work for nothing?

A: That’s a terrible idea because, you know, freedom!

Q: But that’s what we do now to a considerable extent for care for people who can’t afford insurance.

A: That can’t be true.

Q: Sorry, Twila, it is. If you present yourself, or your kid, at a hospital emergency room, under federal law they have to treat you.

A: People shouldn’t take advantage of that.

Q: If you were poor, and you had a child who had what you suspected was strep throat, or an infant with an ear infection that made her cry constantly, what would you do?

A: Um, do I have to answer that?

Q: You have health insurance, don’t you Twila? On your insurance card, what kind of care comes with the largest co-pay?

A: Um, I think it’s the ER.

Q: And why do you suppose that is?

A: Because a visit to the ER costs more than a trip to a regular doctor?

Q: Bingo. A lot of the care provided to the uninsured at the ER just gets swallowed by the providers, and in turn those who support them: e.g., county taxpayers and private health insurance providers.

A: There must be a better system than that!

Q: We’ll pick that up, and the issue of picking your doctor next time.

[Are there any readers who can identify the pouting woman on the billboard?]

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